Читать книгу Essay on the Creative Imagination - Th. Ribot - Страница 17

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Considered under its intellectual aspect, that is, in so far as it borrows its elements from the understanding, the imagination presupposes two fundamental operations—the one, negative and preparatory, dissociation; the other, positive and constitutive, association.

Dissociation is the "abstraction" of the older psychologists, who well understood its importance for the subject with which we are now concerned. Nevertheless, the term "dissociation" seems to me preferable, because it is more comprehensive. It designates a genus of which the other is a species. It is a spontaneous operation and of a more radical nature than the other. Abstraction, strictly so-called, acts only on isolated states of consciousness; dissociation acts, further, on series of states of consciousness, which it sorts out, breaks up, dissolves, and through this preparatory work makes suitable for entering into new combinations.

Perception is a synthetic process, but dissociation (or abstraction) is already present in embryo in perception, just because the latter is a complex state. Everyone perceives after an individual fashion, according to his constitution and the impression of the moment. A painter, a sportsman, a dealer, and an uninterested spectator do not see a given horse in the same manner: the qualities that interest one are unnoticed by another.[3]

The image being a simplification of sensory data, and its nature dependent on that of previous perceptions, it is inevitable that the work of dissociation should go on in it. But this is far too mild a statement. Observation and experiment show us that in the majority of cases the process grows wonderfully. In order to follow the progressive development of this dissolution, we may roughly differentiate images into three categories—complete, incomplete, and schematic—and study them in order.

The group of images here termed complete comprises first, objects repeatedly presented in daily experience—my wife's face, my inkstand, the sound of a church bell or of a neighboring clock, etc. In this class are also included the images of things that we have perceived but a few times, but which, for additional reasons, have remained clean-cut in our memory. Are these images complete, in the strict sense of the word? They cannot be; and the contrary belief is a delusion of consciousness that, however, disappears when one confronts it with the reality. The mental image can contain all the qualities of an object in even less degree than the perception; the image is the result of selection, varying with every case. The painter Fromentin, who was proud that he found after two or three years "an exact recollection" of things he had barely noticed on a journey, makes elsewhere, however, the following confession: "My memory of things, although very faithful, has never the certainty admissible as documentary evidence. The weaker it grows, the more is it changed in becoming the property of my memory and the more valuable is it for the work that I intend for it. In proportion as the exact form becomes altered, another form, partly real, partly imaginary, which I believe preferable, takes its place." Note that the person speaking thus is a painter endowed with an unusual visual memory; but recent investigations have shown that among men generally the so-called complete and exact images undergo change and warping. One sees the truth of this statement when, after a lapse of some time, one is placed in the presence of the original object, so that comparison between the real object and its image becomes possible.[4] Let us note that in this group the image always corresponds to certain individual objects; it is not the same with the other two groups.

The group of incomplete images, according to the testimony of consciousness itself, comes from two distinct sources—first, from perceptions insufficiently or ill-fixed; and again, from impressions of like objects which, when too often repeated, end by becoming confused. The latter case has been well described by Taine. A man, says he, who, having gone through an avenue of poplars wants to picture a poplar; or, having looked into a poultry-yard, wishes to call up a picture of a hen, experiences a difficulty—his different memories rise up. The experiment becomes a cause of effacement; the images canceling one another decline to a state of imperceptible tendencies which their likeness and unlikeness prevent from predominating. Images become blunted by their collision just as do bodies by friction.[5]

This group leads us to that of schematic images, or those entirely without mark—the indefinite image of a rosebush, of a pin, of a cigarette, etc. This is the greatest degree of impoverishment; the image, deprived little by little of its own characteristics, is nothing more than a shadow. It has become that transitional form between image and pure concept that we now term "generic image," or one that at least resembles the latter.

The image, then, is subject to an unending process of change, of suppression and addition, of dissociation and corrosion. This means that it is not a dead thing; it is not at all like a photographic plate with which one may reproduce copies indefinitely. Being dependent on the state of the brain, the image undergoes change like all living substance—it is subject to gains and losses, especially losses. But each of the foregoing three classes has its use for the inventor. They serve as material for different kinds of imagination—in their concrete form, for the mechanic and the artist; in their schematic form, for the scientist and for others.

Thus far we have seen only a part of the work of dissociation and, taking it all in all, the smallest part. We have, seemingly, considered images as isolated facts, as psychic atoms; but that is a purely theoretic position. Images are not solitary in actual life; they form part of a chain, or rather of a woof or net, since, by reason of their manifold relations they may radiate in all directions, through all the senses. Dissociation, then, works also upon series, cuts them up, mangles them, breaks them, and reduces them to ruins.

The ideal law of the recurrence of images is that known since Hamilton's time under the name of "law of redintegration,"[6] which consists in the passing from a part to the whole, each element tending to reproduce the complete state, each member of a series the whole of that series. If this law existed alone, invention would be forever forbidden to us; we could not emerge from repetition; we should be condemned to monotony. But there is an opposite power that frees us—it is dissociation.

It is very strange that, while psychologists have for so long a time studied the laws of association, no one has investigated whether the inverse process, dissociation, also has not laws of its own. We can not here attempt such a task, which would be outside of our province; it will suffice to indicate in passing two general conditions determining the association of series.

First, there are the internal or subjective causes. The revived image of a face, a monument, a landscape, an occurrence, is, most often, only partial. It depends on various conditions that revive the essential part and drop the minor details, and this "essential" which survives dissociation depends on subjective causes, the principal ones of which are at first practical, utilitarian reasons. It is the tendency already mentioned to ignore what is of no value, to exclude that from consciousness. Helmholtz has shown that in the act of seeing, various details remain unnoticed because they are immaterial in the concerns of life; and there are many other like instances. Then, too, emotional reasons governing the attention orientate it exclusively in one direction—these will be studied in the course of this work. Lastly, there are logical or intellectual reasons, if we understand by this term the law of mental inertia or the law of least resistance by means of which the mind tends toward the simplification and lightening of its labor.

Secondly, there are external or objective causes which are variations in experience. When two or more qualities or events are given as constantly associated in experience we do not dissociate them. The uniformity of nature's laws is the great opponent of dissociation. Many truths (for example, the existence of the antipodes) are established with difficulty, because it is necessary to break up closely knit associations. The oriental king whom Sully mentions, who had never seen ice, refused to credit the existence of solid water. A total impression, the elements of which had never been given us separately in experience, would be unanalyzable. If all cold objects were moist, and all moist objects cold; if all liquids were transparent and all non-liquids opaque, we should find it difficult to distinguish cold from moisture and liquidity from transparency. On his part, James adds further that what has been associated sometimes with one thing and sometimes with another tends to become dissociated from both. This might be called a law of association by concomitant variations.[7]

In order to thoroughly comprehend the absolute necessity for dissociation, let us note that total redintegration is per se a hindrance to creation. Examples are given of people who can easily remember twenty or thirty pages of a book, but if they want a particular passage they are unable to pick it out—they must begin at the beginning and continue down to the required place. Excessive ease of retention thus becomes a serious inconvenience. Besides these rare cases, we know that ignorant people, those intellectually limited, give the same invariable story of every occurrence, in which all the parts—the important and the accessory, the useful and the useless—are on a dead level. They omit no detail, they cannot select. Minds of this kind are inapt at invention. In short, we may say that there are two kinds of memory: one is completely systematized, e.g., habits, routine, poetry or prose learned by heart, faultless musical rendering, etc. The acquisition forms a compact whole and cannot enter into new combinations. The other is not systematized; it is composed of small, more or less coherent groups. This kind of memory is plastic and capable of becoming combined in new ways.

We have enumerated the spontaneous, natural causes of association, omitting the voluntary and artificial causes, which are but their imitations. As a result of these various causes, images are taken to pieces, shattered, broken up, but made all the readier as materials for the inventor. This is a process analogous to that which, in geologic time, produces new strata through the wearing away of old rocks.